"_By Hook or by Crook_" (vol. iii. p. 116.).--However unimaginative the
worthy Cit may be for whose explanation of this popular phrase J. D. S. has
made himself answerable, the solution sounds so pretty, that to save its
obtaining further credence, more than your well-timed note is needed. I
with safety can contradict it, for I find that "Tusser," a Norfolk man
living in the reign of Henry VIII., in a poem which he wrote as a complete
monthly guide and adviser for the farmer through the year, but which was
not published till 1590, in the thirty-second year of Queen Elizabeth, has
the following advice for March 30:
"Of mastiues and mongrels, that many we see
A number of thousands, to many there be:
Watch therefore in Lent, to thy sheepe go and looke,
For dogs will have vittels, by hooke and by crooke."
This must be a Norfolk phrase; for in January he advises farmers possessing
"Hollands," rich grass lands, to only keep ewes that bear twins,
"twinlins."